The present invention is directed to head-worn hearing devices, such as head-worn hearing aids and personal sound amplifier products (“PSAPs”), and particularly to such head-worn mobile hearing devices which have both a microphone for receiving sound and a separate wireless receiver for receiving a wireless audio signal, either or both of which can be output on a speaker (referred to in the hearing aid industry as a “receiver”) or as an electrical stimulus with a cochlear implant. For simplicity in describing the invention, the present application uses the term “hearing aid”, but the invention applies equally to other types of head-worn hearing devices, both to address hearing deficiencies and for other purposes.
A common problem for hearing impaired people when using a hearing aid is understanding speech in noisy conditions. In technical terms, hearing impaired people would do better if the signal to noise (S/N) ratio of the audio content were improved. Consider a hearing impaired person at a noisy restaurant with his or her spouse and four other people. If stuck at the corner of the table, the hearing impaired person may have a major problem understanding the speaker(s) at the far end of the table. A directional hearing aid (hearing aid with a microphone array which can be controlled to amplify sounds from the selected direction more than sounds from other directions) helps, but the beam forming of today's directional hearing aids is broad (covers a relatively wide area) and not very effective in reverberant environments.
A separate problem occurs when the hearing aid can receive a wireless audio signal, such as from a TV streamer or from a remote microphone, and then amplify, shape and/or otherwise output the signal to be best heard and understood by the wearer of the hearing aid. When using such a wireless audio input, the user may not desire to only listen to the wireless audio signal, but may concurrently or sporadically want to listen to sound from a different source received through the hearing aid microphone. For example, the TV streaming user may want to converse with another person in the room during TV commercials. A similar condition would be on an airplane where a person (not necessarily hearing impaired) is using earbuds or headphones (possibly noise cancelling) to listen to a movie, but who may want to sporadically converse with the flight attendant or person seated in the next seat. The audio from the movie makes hearing speech, even from a nearby person, difficult.
With some hearing aids, the user may be able to switch back and forth between the wireless audio input and the hearing aid microphone input, using a control mechanism such as push buttons on the hearing aid, on the TV streamer, or from a cell phone application in communication with the hearing aid. Such user-controlled manual switching allows good performance for both inputs, but repeatedly initiating the manual switching each time the user wants to switch sound sources is tedious and can become a serious hassle. Another alternative is to have the hearing aid consistently mix the wireless audio input with the microphone input, allowing the user to continually hear both inputs. Mixing multiple audio inputs is hassle free, but reduces the S/N performance. Better solutions are needed.